Bayer Garden Ready to Use Sprays

Overview

WHO

Bayer Garden products

WHAT

The Bayer Garden range now incorporates a series of Ready To Use (RTU) sprays, with bottles clad in colorful graphic shrink film.

NEEDS

“The pack is a complex shape and requires a very high shrink percentage,” explained Jon Cowan, sales director at CCL Decorative Sleeving, Bayer Garden’s shrink sleeve printer. “With design features like the finger grips at the top, it’s a very uneven shape and therefore an uneven shrink, and because these are big bottles, the side-to-side orientation is very important. The big, bold colors and the graphics are also challenging, particularly because the high shrink rate requires some pre-distortion.” Bayer was also looking improve the clarity of their labels while utilizing vibrant colors that would not fade with time.

MATERIAL

“Basically, creating the films that met all of [our] criteria made it very important to choose a high-quality, reliable, high shrink material. Embrace™ was selected because it was the highest performance material available for this project”, explained Cowan. Embrace™ catches the eye, but its appeal goes beyond the visual. Unlike traditional pressure-sensitive labels, Embrace™ shrink films offer great performance when faced with long-term exposure to the garden spray’s natural habitat: the damp, musty shed. “We’d expect an RTU to last a season or maybe two, but it really depends on how active the gardener is,” says Steve Mead, head of marketing at Bayer Garden. “Those using it over a longer period will typically keep it in the shed, where historically labels fade with age. Embrace™ is resistant to that: the product will look just as good after a couple of years as it did when it was bought.”

SUCCESS

For gardeners the appeal of the Embrace™-clad RTU began in the shopping aisle. “We have a massive thumbs-up for the shrink sleeves, they introduce a whole new appeal into the market,” said Mead. “Our containers have become much more fun to look at, which makes it easier to shop. Sales of RTUs took off once we started using Embrace™. I can’t stress how big an improvement it is over pressure-sensitive labels. It makes the bottles look better but also nicer to pick up and handle. From a marketing perspective, it allows us to be more creative and colorful with the design of the packaging because obviously there is more surface area to play with. The shrink sleeves allow us to have any color we want. Consumers staring at a busy garden care shelving unit tend to go for the impulse purchase: they buy whichever product leaps off the shelf.”